Thursday Thoughts

I've been reading about Thomas Bowdler today, for some reason. Probably because I was looking at games in the early history of chess and his name came up. Bowdler was a pretty strong player, capable of taking Philidor on at odds of pawn and 2 moves. They played 8 games winning 2 and only losing 3 to the great French player.

Bowdler is immortalised in the English language after he cleaned up Shakespeare for Victorian family audiences. To "bowdlerise" is to change or cut parts of a novel or movie that might offend. The advert for Bowdler's "Family Shakespeare" stated that "those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." Seeing that Shakespeare's plays are full of innuendo and sometimes outright filth, it would be interesting to see how Bowdler's censorship took the bard apart.

I wonder how the censor's knife worked on this Shakespearean classic put down:

"By my life, this is my lady's hand, these be her very C's, her U's, and her T's, and thus makes she her great P's."

If you're wondering what this means, try spelling the capitals, but instead of "and", use the abbreviation 'n, and it should all make sense :D

Censorship is a strange thing, and an issue that polarises people. In our internet age, material has become much more explicit than even just 35-40 years ago when I was in my teenage years. For example, I link to Kevin Spraggett's blog on this page, but if I was following the principles of Bowdler, I'd be setting content warnings about it. Personally, I fall more into the category of the allowing freedom of speech camp, though there are some limits that I find difficult to tolerate, usually based on hate or discrimination.

Which brings me to the bizarre banning of chess by Saudi Arabia. According to the Fatwa against chess, the game 'promotes hatred between opponents', 'promotes the potential for gambling', and may cut into prayer time. This is all taken from the twitter account of Musa Bin Thaily of the Saudi Chess Association, who also suggests that chess may not actually be banned, but rather there are some other factors being taken into account such as the authorities need to control individuals. As he says, open air music concerts are banned, but they happen. However, the opportunity is there for the authroities to close the concerts down.

So where's the logic in banning chess? It's a game, a pastime, an activity which promotes logical thinking. And it brings pleasure to so many people, myself included.Can this be a bad thing? I'll finish with another literary quote, this time by Charlotte Bronte which sums up my opinion of the Saudi Fatwa:

"Better to be without logic than without feeling"

Amazing Online Resource

Yesterday, I tried my hand at opening writing which went pretty well besides putting an apostrophe on the wrong place. I guess like anything else the more one practices, the better one will get, so I'll keep taking a look at openings in the future. One thing I am determined to do is get to grips with the Najdorf. It's an opening that I used to play, and I have tried to play on the white side, though certainly not from a critical perspective. To be honest, I'm not that interested in the Najdorf (or any other opening for that matter) to buy a book on the subject. I prefer to learn openings from playing, and analysing games. I might then use a monograph as a reference once I have some ideas of my own. I've always believed that this method avoids the hype and dogma that opening books invariably contain, and keep me thinking for myself and looking for positions that attract me, rather than positions which are supposed to be theoretically preferred. This is important as a good position and a comfortable position are not the same thing. Some players prefer static advantages, whereas others look for dynamic features in positions.

One person who is putting a lot of work into their chess is Canadian Michael Yip. Yip lives in Budapest and writes his fantastic blog, Budapest Chess News (BCN). If you haven't checked it out yet, then definitely take a look. Yip writes mainly about chess in his native Canada, and his residence of Hungary. But there is so much more than that. He produces a monthly file with heavily analysed games, that can be downloaded from Kevin Spraggett's site. He also has 3 other blogs, all about opening theory which he updates almost daily. These blogs cover 1.e4, 1.d4, and other openings. This tremendous work is absolutely free, and is well worth a look for anyone wanting to start out with some theoretical knowledge. I, for instance, will be using Yip's coverage of the Najdorf as my basis for studying this opening.

So today, I downloaded the July issue of BCN and haven't yet had a good look through it. There are about 120 heavily analysed games in the file that is stored in chessbase format. Take a look at Yip's coverage of the Najdorf between Caruana and Nakamura from the recently concluded Tal Memorial.




This is an amazing dedication to chess and chess writing, which inspires me to do more as well. I doubt that I will be able to put as much into studying the opening of the game as Michael Yip has, but I still intend to do more than I was previously doing. Watch this space!

First Post in a Month

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted anything, and the only excuse I have is that I've been incredibly busy, working up to 70 hour weeks, and have felt too tired in my spare time to blog, or have had other priorities. To be honest, when I read that sentence, I feel it's pretty lame. A wise man once told me that to best utilise my time, I should break it down into small segments and try to achieve something within each segment. So, if you say to yourself you are going to do A, then B, and finally C, in a day, the chances are that with some other commitments, some prevarication and some natural human laziness, C will be pushed aside to be completed the next day. However, the next day comes with it's own set of tasks, so C may be pushed back to D on the next day and so on, until it is a forgotten to do task that simply slips away. Now, if instead of trying to do 3 things in a day, 3 hours are chosen during the day to achieve something, then it is probable that all 3 things will get done (assuming they are no more than an hour's worth of work each), and it is even possible that the necessary tasks are achieved within the first 2 hours, leaving the third on to do something else. Even better, is to split the time further into 30 minute or 15 minute segments. This would mean that quick tasks, such as writing an email,don't take a whole hour. So I have decided that during my busy schedule I need to prioritise my time in a more effective way, splitting it into 15 partitions where I can attribute time to getting this blog back on track.

Cool, that was one 15 minute segment successfully utilised!

Of course a lot has happened in the past month in the chess world and while I've tried to follow the exploits of the top players, I've found it difficult in the current work climate. The thing that really got me excited was that this blog has had a heap of viewers recently, and as I haven't been writing I wasn't sure why. Well, it seems that this blog comes up near the top of the google search engine for "chess blog" which surprised me, and then I found that top blogger, GM Kevin Spraggett, had linked to me on his excellent blog (note this has recently changed from blogger to wordpress. I hope Kevin gets along well with wordpress as I had trouble finding a chess viewer that worked well with wordpress which is why I changed to blogger). So I suppose I have to start producing some new content to keep these new readers happy.

I will ask my chess readers to be tolerant with me for the next couple of months, as I will then be going on holiday to the USA with my wife, and if I spend some time on this blog sharing my excitement of the upcoming roadtrip then please just go with it, and indulge me. I've also joined Goodreads which is great for finding ideas for spending some relaxing 15 minute sessions losing oneself in a good book. I'm currently about two thirds of the way through "Oscar and Lucinda" by Peter Carey, and I would have to recommend it to all my Australian friends (and all readers as it is a beautifully crafted novel) as it addresses some fundamental issues endemic to Australian society.

Wow, another 15 minutes well spent :)

I guess I should sign off now, and spend the next 15 minutes that I have spare improving my time management skills, so that I can fit more into the day.

Lots of chess action, but none live!

Unfortunately with the time zone differences between the UK and Australia I am not able to follow the Candidates tournament live. I'm still ardently following the event, just after the fact. And that loses some of it's immediacy and tension. I love watching live games, seeing the action unfold, and trying to guess the moves and ideas that the players are coming up with. Then perhaps comparing how my ideas and moves match up to their own. It's actually a good way of improving your thinking, as when you propose a move that isn't played, you try to justify it and then if you finally admit your move was worse than the played move, it teaches you how you should be thinking and playing.

It is doubly unfortunate for me and Aussies who can't follow the action live, because there has been plenty of action and drama. I'm sure there is still some action and drama to come, especially as the field is relatively close still. The top 5 players are separated by 1.5 points and with 5 rounds still to go, any of them could still finish first. Of course, Magnus Carlsen must now be the favourite to take outright first, though he is only half a point ahead of Aronian and a point clear of Kramnik. Boris Gelfand has surprised everyone by coming out of the first half of the tournament in poor form, to score 2 wins in excellent fashion at the start of the second half. It is probably too much to ask for Gelfand to maintain that momentum, but he will be fully pumped for his next game against Carlsen who has been hanging on rather than moving forward for the past couple of rounds. While he's out of contention, I was happy to see Ivanchuk win a game. I don't like to see any player without a win in a tournament, and I've been in that position myself a few times pretty deep into events so I know how it feels.

What was triply unfortunate for me was that the live action that I was looking forward to at the Melbourne Chess Club was switched off last night. So I'll have to wait to see those games as well! And to make matters worse, it looked a fascinating round (a lot of byes, but I guess the Jewish Pesach required that quite a few players couldn't attend). I would have eagerly followed FM Wallis-IM West on board 1. Neither of these players give any quarter and both would have been out for a win. The game ended in a draw which leaves Guy still first. Ari Dale could have caught him with a win, but he could also only draw with FM Dragicevic. Justin Tan won his game to move within a point of West. The top places are:

6. West
5.5 Dale
5. Wallis, Dragicevic, Tan
4.5. Pyke, Beaumont, Hacche

The winner will come from this group of players, though Guy West controls his own destiny. The postponed games Drew (3.5)-Stojic (4) and Dizdarevic (3.5)-Michaille (4) will also place players into these groups.

So no live action from London or the MCC. So I'll have to regurgitate what I've been telling my advanced kids today. While it's a good idea to play to your own strengths, I think you should vary your style depending on the strength of your opponent. It makes sense, if your playing someone who you believe to be weaker than yourself, to play a safe game and to take no risks. The chances are that the longer the game goes, the more likely it is that the weaker player will blunder, so a stronger player wants those games to go a long time. Conversely, if you're playing someone you believe to be much stronger than you, it makes more sense to try something risky, and bring the game into a tactical mess where your stronger opponent is as likely to blunder as you. Remember, the longer the game the more chance you will blunder, so keep the game short and try to blast your opponent away. If it fails, then at least you will have some tactical ideas to look at, and you will have saved yourself the horror of being slowly ground down over a long time.

To make this point I found a game played in the recent Rejkyavik Open where a 1900 player smashes a 2473 rated IM with the Muzio Gambit. I found this game with some pretty extensive motes from Michael Yip's excellent Budapest Chess News. Just the game is good, but if you want the notes, you can go to the site and download the files for free. Check it out, and watch the fun :)

How Amazing is Social Media?

So, I'm a bit of a technophobe, and fairly reluctant to try new gadgets, but I have to say that I'm completely blown away recently by the power of the internet. I'm currently following live feeds on Twitter and the BBC news site over the shock announcement that the Pope is to resign. Now as a non Catholic, I'm not going to make comment on this turn of events, but it is a momentous piece of news. In fact Pope Benedict will be the first Pope to resign in office since Gregory XII in 1415. I am now an avid follower of Twitter, and when I'm online I will have a tab with it running while I do other things. Besides following various chess tweeters, and some authors and book sites, it is the news that mainly interests me, and I find the BBC coverage usually very good. I always have an alternative site news running so as to get a second opinion, though this second site changes. Currently I am following Sky News, but I think I'll change soon.

My main point of contact with others online is through Facebook, and I've found it an invaluable tool for following the progress of my family back in the UK, and for promoting chess and this blog. I must admit that I'm not too bothered about the number of 'friends' I have, or interests I follow. I guess we all use these social media tools for our own ends.

But personally I find the most useful thing about the internet is the way it has made following chess so easy. There are some sites which I regularly follow and have done for a very long time. Top of the list are my favourite 2 sites, The Week in Chess (TWIC) and the Chess Cafe. TWIC is a chess news site while Chess Cafe offers regular articles on all aspects of the game. I use TWIC as my main portal for watching live games. On the site there is a live chess game page, and links to other live games happening around the world.  In fact, watching live games online is one of my favourite chess activities. My local chess club, the Melbourne Chess Club (MCC) has a digital board and I've been watching a game tonight which has been broadcast live. I see the game has just finished but I'm guessing the result has been put in wrong, as it looks as if white has forced mate rather than the game being a draw.

I also like to follow blogs. Some I have been looking at for a long time, while I like to try new ones out for a bit. My blogroll to the right of the page shows blogs I follow as do the links underneath. Some of these are updated more often than others and I've found a few more to follow. Kevin Spraggett's blog is excellent for chess. Spraggett is a Canadian GM and his chess posts are great reading material whether they are about parts of the game itself, or commentary about chess politics or culture. I also want to follow Denis Monokrousos' site as that also has a great deal of chess content. I'll be adding these 2 sites to the blogroll and following them for the next couple of months, at least until the end of the London Candidates.